The Guardian: Plucky little Georgia? No, the cold war reading won't wash

[laststeamtrain]

Plucky little Georgia? No, the cold war reading won't wash

It is crudely simplistic to cast Russia as the sole villain in the clashes over South Ossetia. The west would be wise to stay out


Mark Almond
The Guardian,
Saturday August 9 2008

For many people the sight of Russian tanks streaming across a border in August has uncanny echoes of Prague 1968. That cold war reflex is natural enough, but after two decades of Russian retreat from those bastions it is misleading. Not every development in the former Soviet Union is a replay of Soviet history.

The clash between Russia and Georgia over South Ossetia, which escalated dramatically yesterday, in truth has more in common with the Falklands war of 1982 than it does with a cold war crisis. When the Argentine junta was basking in public approval for its bloodless recovery of Las Malvinas, Henry Kissinger anticipated Britain's widely unexpected military response with the comment: "No great power retreats for ever." Maybe today Russia has stopped the long retreat to Moscow which started under Gorbachev.

Back in the late 1980s, as the USSR waned, the red army withdrew from countries in eastern Europe which plainly resented its presence as the guarantor of unpopular communist regimes. That theme continued throughout the new republics of the deceased Soviet Union, and on into the premiership of Putin, under whom Russian forces were evacuated even from the country's bases in Georgia.

To many Russians this vast geopolitical retreat from places which were part of Russia long before the dawn of communist rule brought no bonus in relations with the west. The more Russia drew in its horns, the more Washington and its allies denounced the Kremlin for its imperial ambitions.

Unlike in eastern Europe, for instance, today in breakaway states such as South Ossetia or Abkhazia, Russian troops are popular. Vladimir Putin's picture is more widely displayed than that of the South Ossetian president, the former Soviet wrestling champion Eduard Kokoity. The Russians are seen as protectors against a repeat of ethnic cleansing by Georgians.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/09/georgia.russia1

[David Dunham]

1. This author must be Neville Chamberlain's grandson. He's no Winston Churchill

[laststeamtrain]

3. WC was a drunk imperialist. So no, the author doesn't seem that way...

but I don't know for sure.

Neville Chamberlain's grandson? Not into genealogy. Or neocon analogies.

[bemildred]

4. You have to be fairly stupid to equate Russia today with Nazi Germany. nt

[Name removed]

2. Deleted message

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[Ghost Dog]

5. Cool it, please.

http://digital.guardian.co.uk/

(Headlines just got changed in the last few seconds). This is moving fast. Please don't get involved, USA.

...And, damnation, I think that most people understand that Mikhail's Perestroika was a great Soviet advance. All right, shoot me.

[laststeamtrain]

6. Kick 'cause I can. n/t